Breathtaking is about the only adjective I can think of to describe yesterday’sa first session today at TED. But then would you expect anything less from the likes of Paleoanthropologist Louise Leaky, Professor Stephen Hawking, Anthropologist Wade Davis, Artist Chris Jordan, and Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor.
The last presentation of the session was incredibly moving. Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain researcher who suffered a stroke. She started the talk with perhaps the best audience attention-getter I have ever seen. She brought a human brain with her, and showed the audience the different parts in graphic detail.
Her story however was about the details she gathered as she experienced the stroke. She was able to make sense of what was happening to her, as her functions shut down, and looked at the experience from her perspective as a researcher. Her understanding was profound and beautiful. She shared that as a researcher she understood what was happening to the left hand side of her brain (what she called the serial processor) , and how her right brain (parallel processor)was taking over, and she was able to see “the we inside of me.” She described the state as Nirvana-like, as all of the components of her brain that create stress (recollection of the past, anticipation of the future) shut off.
Her point was that we can choose the consciousness of the two hemisphere’s, and that if we take the time to spend more time in the peace of our right brain, that perhaps there will be more peace. Her presentation was one of the most moving I have ever seen.
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